Political science, like all the social sciences these days, has an extreme ideological skew. Consequently, any subjective evaluation of the openness (or any oth

Political science, like all the social sciences these days, has an extreme ideological skew. Consequently, any subjective evaluation of the openness (or any other kind of goodness) of a particular country is going to partially reflect merely the extent to which that country reflects the prevailing ideological skew among the experts doing the evaluation. In the present climate, it's difficult to imagine a well-run democratic country with politics opposite to that which prevails in Western academia receiving a great score no matter how well it's run. Personally, I consider these sorts of studies as just noise. I can't trust any of their methods or conclusions when the researchers are all drawn from an intellectual monoculture that demands constant activism in favor of that monoculture.